


Winners and Losers

by JoCarthage



Category: Fast and the Furious Series
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-28
Updated: 2013-06-28
Packaged: 2017-12-16 09:53:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/860793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoCarthage/pseuds/JoCarthage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brian can tell who the winners and the losers are that first night in LA. A one-shot I wrote for a writing exchange.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Winners and Losers

Brian hitched his hip against the side of his car, eyes scanning the crowd. When he’d arrived an hour before, it had been total chaos. A pulsing, amoeba of people, so loud he could hear his ears ringing in the first 15 minutes.

It didn’t take Brian a long time to figure out who the winners and the loser were. It had less to do with who won a given matchup and more to do with who walked their his head high after circling back to the party. The ones who had people waiting for them when they got back. 

The losers were unaffiliated, un-familied, and when they lost they lost alone. 

He knew which of these he was now, but he also knew which one he could be. He didn’t have a friend in this roiling morass of sweating Angelinos, much less a crew, he didn’t have someone talking up his Nos timing or the quality of his mods. He didn’t have a bro mechanic, he didn’t have a girlfriend or boyfriend to keep him company as he waited his turn for that 1/4 mile of pure concentration to start.

He spotted his mark, with thick arms and a shaved head. He watched him move through the crowd. He looked like a loser at first glance, sitting marble-faced behind his hulking piece of American muscle. His car entered alone, without an entourage, surrounded by a protective bubble of air. 

It was that bubble that gave his status away; losers got jostled, cramped, ignored in the crush. Winners could be counted in the space allotted to their breaths, to their exhaust pipes and their nudging lights. When the mark got out, he was afforded the same space as his car: driver and vehicle operating under the same bandwidth of respect.

The mark leaned against his Charger’s door, glaring out into the crowd. But after a few minutes, a guy with dreads drifted by, clasped his hand and murmured something in his ear. The mark nodded and the clasper drifted. A mousy man walked up and, without making any kind of eye-contact or asking any form of permission, slung the hood up and tapped around on the engine, twisting his wrench around and mussing around.

The mark watched placidly, nodding again when the much smaller man closed the hood with care and wafted away. It continued this way for an hour. Man after man, with a few women, moved by, staying no more than half a minute, getting a nod and very rarely a few words.

Brian could see what would happen if this man raced. He’d have those who’d dropped by on his side. If there was a fight about the outcome, he had a crew to back him. If he won and needed to buy a round, he would have to drop some serious cash.

He didn't need a swirling, soiling crowd to guarantee his win: he had the respect he needed to support any claim he'd make that night.

Brain felt the pull, his deep-set eyes hooking into the back of his brain in one casual glance. He felt himself swaying away from his import, bone-curious what would happen if he waltzed on by the man's ride, asked him a few questions about his mods, then ducked away. He thought he would miss a cue, expose himself in a way he couldn't recover from. He had to have something to give, to get into that bubble of silent apprehension.

He knew he would do it by being fast, by pulling himself into that man's wake and learning to swim on his pattern. He just hoped he could keep his head above water long enough to learn to be a winner.


End file.
